YouTube Is Building an Ad-Free Subscription Service…

A couple months ago, screenshots from YouTube Music Key‘s Android app leaked. YTMK is an ad-free music streaming service that YouTube has been working on for some time, facing delays as multiple staff members have left their positions.

Now, it looks like the music service is part of a wider subscription-based strategy.

YouTube head Susan Wojcicki told attendees at the Code/Mobile conference that YouTube is working on a general ad-free subscription-based service. YouTube would continue to offer their free service, but would introduce subscriptions for people who are tired of seeing ads.

Wall Street Journal sources say the subscription service could center around certain types of content, such as news.

Wojcicki says the service is coming soon, but wouldn’t give a specific timeframe. She also says YouTube remains early in the building process.

The industry needs to launch a free, non-censored, high-quality, ad-financed, artist-friendly, better-paying alternative to YouTube/Google — owned and operated by the industry — and use that service exclusively. All revenues straight back to the artists!

Exclusive releases have proved to be a huge success for Netflix. Now it’s our turn.

It doesn’t make sense to give more than half of our income to the world’s largest advertizing agency and allow the corporation to censor our music and prevent us from making exclusive iTunes releases, etc.

The world is changing and we need to change with it. As Julian Assange says in his new book:

“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has.”

I’m excited for this, but I’m curious to see how it would work. If it had some high-quality, curated content, it could be a great addition to Netflix and Hulu Plus for entertaining, indie video creators.